


the still point of the turning world

by punkfaery



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Panic Attacks, Sharing a Bed, or not so much 'established' as 'they've been dating for 6000 years and just haven't noticed yet', the best cure for anxiety is cuddling and nature documentaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 00:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19139989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkfaery/pseuds/punkfaery
Summary: "They’d been scheduled to meet on Tuesday, but Crowley hadn’t shown. He’d left a message, short and to the point, explaining that he’d had some things to do, and at any other time Aziraphale might have been offended at being stood up. But he wasn’t. Instead, he found himself worrying. He couldn’t name it, but things – in a general sense – weren’t as they should be. It was like looking at a design with the wrong dimensions, or an equation missing a crucial integer.Something about the way he'd looked...“Oh,honestly,” Aziraphale said to the empty room, and he reached up for his coat.Or:Crowley has an existential crisis. Aziraphale attempts to pick up the pieces.





	the still point of the turning world

**Author's Note:**

> The response to my last fic was overwhelmingly kind, and I didn't know how to respond other than "well, I guess I'd better write another one?". So I did. Disclaimer: I am only on Episode 3 of the series, so my knowledge of what happens past that is limited. The only thing that stops this from being straight-up book!verse is that "Springwatch" didn't start airing until 2007; other than that, it can be read as part of whatever canon you'd like it to be.
> 
> Bonus disclaimer: I still can't work out how to do footnotes, so there are none. 
> 
> Special extra bonus disclaimer: the film that Crowley and Aziraphale are half-watching is "The Best Years of Our Lives", and The Chelsea Arts Ball was a high-class fancy-dress event that was shut down in 1958 due to its reputation for nudity, alcohol abuse, and public homosexual activity. Crowley would probably have felt very at home there.

The worst part was that the candles shouldn’t even have been necessary in the first place. 

The bookshop had electric lighting, and it had windows. That ought to have been enough. But true to form, the electric lighting had been installed about three decades too late and tended to flicker worryingly in bad weather; and the windows, few as they were, were so dusty that they made even the brightest sunlight look jaundiced. The resulting gloom was partly a mechanism to keep customers from wanting to stay in there for too long, and partly because too much light was bad for the books. Faded the binding. (That was what Aziraphale always said, anyway, and Crowley took him at his word. He didn’t know much about books.)

This particular day was a cloudy one, unseasonably so for July. The shop was closed. It had been closed for three days now, give or take. This did not mean that it was empty. Its inhabitants – of which there were two – consisted of one angel, currently hunting through the upstairs flat in search of a missing box of shortbread, and one demon, currently seated at the foot of the stairs with a newspaper spread over his lap. His back rested against one wall, and his feet against the other.

Aziraphale came down the stairs, wielding the shortbread in one hand and a bone folder in the other. “Oh,” he said, spotting Crowley. “Er. Can I get through, please?”

“Pay the toll,” said Crowley, without looking up.

Aziraphale gave him a piece of shortbread.

He bit into it. “Payment accepted,” he said, pulling his legs up so that Aziraphale could pass. “What are you doing over there, anyway?”

“Trying to breathe some life into this poor specimen,” Aziraphale said. He indicated a sorry-looking tome, its navy fabric binding frayed and bleached duck-egg-blue in places. “What its last owner did to it I don’t know… It would _help,”_ he added, grimacing, “if we had a little more light. I can’t see what I’m doing.”

“Don’t complain to me, you’re the one who never cleans the windows.” Another season of that awful sitcom? How predictable. News these days just wasn’t what it used to be.

Somewhere to his left, Aziraphale was searching. Although “rummaging” might have been a better word. Things kept coming out of cupboards and going back into them. Crowley, absorbed in a story about a guy who had won the lottery on a stolen scratch card and then used the money to sue them for arresting him, paid scant attention. Now _this_ was something he could get behind. Much better than yet another photograph of some poor celebrity’s wardrobe malfunction.

“Ah,” he heard, not ten minutes later. “There they are. I knew I had them somewhere.”

Crowley looked up.

After the world didn’t end, Adam had done a spot of tidying. Very, very thorough tidying. There were some small changes, of course: new curtains, extra books, a calla lily that Crowley had put to death now returned in its pot and looking much too smug about it. Things like that. Everything else, though, had gone back to normal. Aziraphale’s accounts were as painstakingly correct as ever. The chalk circle under the carpet was still there. So, too, were the candles that had been used to get hold of Upstairs. Aziraphale had them out now, white and waxy and new, and was screwing them into a three-armed holder. “That’s more like it,” he said, and passed a hand over the wicks, which flared into life. “There. Now let’s see about this spine, oh my, this is going to be very difficult to replace…”

His voice broke off. After a second, he ventured:

“Crowley? You’ve gone quite green – not literally, of course, but in the sense of... I say, are you all right?”

Crowley was staring at the candles. He felt odd.

“Yeah,” he said. “Fine. Fine, completely. Never better.” His voice sounded odd, too. “You know people stopped going ‘I say’ a good fifty years ago, don’t you?”

Aziraphale was still looking at him with a mixture of doubt and suspicion. Then he turned his head and saw the candles. “Oh,” he said, chagrined, “I think I see the problem. Well spotted, my dear.” The candles snuffed themselves out. Trails of vanilla-scented smoke rose into the air. “Better?” he said, trying for a smile. “You’d ought to think I’d have learnt my lesson after that whole debacle. Lucky, really, that Adam was able to do such a neat job of restoring it.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Lucky.” He blinked. It took more effort than it should have done. The candlelight left blue streaks across his vision, shifting and changing when he turned his head.

“Are you quite sure you’re – ?”

_“Yes.”_

“Not to be presumptuous, but you don’t look it.” Aziraphale’s voice was soft, like he was trying to calm a spooked horse. “Care to tell me what the matter is?”

Crowley turned sharply away. “More coffee,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He strode over to the little kitchenette and filled the kettle with shaking hands. Ordinarily he would have simply miracled a cup out of thin air, but doing it manually was – what was the word? – _grounding._

Or it should have been, anyway. As it was, he felt rather as if he was standing a good five feet away, watching his own body go through the motions of making coffee. He saw himself pour out the coffee, and then stop. What next? Sugar, that was it. That was the thing. But he couldn’t remember where Aziraphale kept it. _Go on,_ he urged himself, _go and have a look in the cupboard, it might be in there._ But nothing happened. His stupid body just kept standing there and staring at nothing.

A warm hand landed on his shoulder. He jerked, coming back to himself.

“It’s in the cupboard over the sink,” said Aziraphale. “Would you like to sit down? You’re still rather pale.”

“’M fine, thanks,” Crowley managed. “Have it without.” A grey fog had started to take shape behind his eyes, and all he could do was stand still and wait for it to blow over. He could no longer remember why he’d wanted coffee so much.

Aziraphale steered him towards a chair.

“Sit,” he said. It was unmistakeably an order.

“I said I was fine,” said Crowley.

 _“Stay,”_ said Aziraphale, as if talking to a disobedient pet.

That rankled, but he didn’t have the energy to combat it. He stayed where he was as Aziraphale clattered around in the kitchenette, doing mysterious things with cupboards. He was still sitting there when Aziraphale returned with a mug. Crowley inhaled. Not coffee. This was chamomile tea, hot and sweet. Like he was some sort of _invalid_. He recoiled, appalled.

“No, thanks,” he said, as Aziraphale offered it to him. “You have it. Actually, I might head off home in a sec. Got some stuff to do.”

Aziraphale’s face did something complicated that started in confusion and ended in alarm. “Really? Right this second?”

“Yeah. I’ll give you a call on Tuesday, though?” Today was Sunday. That would be fine, wouldn’t it? He could easily pack an existential crisis into two days. Could even trim it down to one if he cut down on wiling.

“All right.” Aziraphale sounded a little hurt. “Well – I’ll see you then, shall I?”

Crowley nodded, car keys already in his hand, and strode over to the door. His car waited outside, and he got in and took the quickest route possible back to his flat, so distracted that he could have mown down twenty pedestrians without even noticing.

It was still chilly. His skin, though, had begun to prickle with phantom heat. He rolled his shirtsleeves up, swerving to avoid a bollard, and cracked open the window. Air came in: not fresh air, but London air, cool and faintly gritty with pollution.

Doors were opening in his mind. Keys turned.

_Lucky._

It hadn’t been the stunning shock of the heat and the flame, that Stygian red glow, the sight of all those books curling into themselves, pages blackening. It hadn’t been the crack as timbers gave way, or the stink of smoke. It hadn’t even been the thought of Aziraphale being discorporated. That had happened more times than he could count, sometimes with Crowley himself as the cause. It never lasted long, unless Heaven was feeling particularly obstructive or the discorporation had been particularly unpleasant.

No. It wasn’t any of that.

It was the idea, previously unconsidered, that Aziraphale might not be around for ever.

Six thousand years of existence made one appreciate the value of constants. There weren’t many of them. One of the hardest things about living on Earth had been learning how to let go of the bits of the world that he’d thought would be around forever. Nothing _lasted_ , not really. That was what made it all so interesting. Once you got used to the idea that the world was essentially in a permanent state of flux – civilisations waxing and waning, buildings lifted up and torn down again, new cultures and dialects and trends springing up out of nowhere – you began to understand what a luxury it was to witness any of it in the first place. All the same…

Well. It was just comforting, in the middle of the sizzling crucible that was the known universe, to have one thing that remained more or less constant. A static point. A controlled variable, against which all other variables could be measured. That was Aziraphale. For six millennia he’d been there, and whatever changes that time had wrought on him had done little to alter his essential nature.

What was the phrase, again? _The still point of the turning world._ It sounded ridiculous, but it was true.

Crowley parked the car at a forty-five degree angle to the kerb and got out, then took the lift to his floor. It hadn’t worked for going on two years, but that didn’t stop him. It was a nice lift. Very light, very spacious. He could have done without the twiddly music, but he was too preoccupied to get rid of it.

After it was over – the world saved, the war aborted, et cetera – he had put it all out of his mind. Compartmentalised, folded his fears up like laundry. Shut them in an airing cupboard and pulled the latch across. It was what he’d done for years, and the tactic hadn’t failed him yet.

The sight of the candles had brought it all back with the force of a gut-punch.

Anything could happen. Heaven could decide that Aziraphale was no longer fulfilling his Earthly duties to their satisfaction, and recall him. Hell could do the same to Crowley – although he doubted they would, for the sole reason that no one Downstairs was willing to put up with him for more than a couple of decades. Aziraphale could get hit by a lorry and denied a new corporation, or he could get caught in the crossfire of some Hellish turf war and erased completely. There were demonic weapons that had the same effect on angels as holy water did on demons, weren’t there? And if that happened…

“Fuck,” he said to the wall. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck.”_

This, he thought, summed matters up nicely.

The lift doors hissed open. As he stumbled out, fumbling with his front door keys, one thought kept replaying in his mind: What do I do? What the hell do I do with all that life?

So much of it. An eternity. The world had been handed back to them, by the grace of G – _Someone,_ but it was no comfort. It had only emphasised just how easily it could all be taken away again. The whole thing suddenly seemed as fragile and ephemeral as a soap bubble.

Crowley sank down on to his white leather sofa, which was mildly surprised to find itself equipped with several cushions and a knitted blanket. He was shivering, somehow hot and cold at the same time. His heart insisted on beating much too fast, even though his head kept telling it sternly that that wasn’t biologically necessary, and when he lifted a hand to pass it across his face the fingers trembled.

All that _life._

And it was no good telling himself that it would never happen. It could. It very much could.

The phone rang. The parts of Crowley that weren’t currently running in panicky rabbit-like circles told him to get up and answer it, but moving was too difficult. Something – indecision? Terror? – kept him rooted where he was. The ringing went on, twice, three times, four, and then the ansaphone kicked in.

“Crowley? It’s me. Aziraphale. Well, I expect you know that already.” An awkward laugh. “I’m terribly sorry to call you up like this so soon after seeing you, but you left in such a tearing hurry, and… I don’t suppose you’d be willing to ring me back? No pressure, naturally. If not, I’ll see you next week as usual. Er. Over and out.”

 _Over and out._ Really?

Crowley collapsed back on the sofa and tried not to think of anything.

 

* * *

 

Aziraphale was worried.

It was Wednesday – a rather nice one, as it happened. The sky was a scrubbed-looking blue, the sun shone, and he hadn’t had a customer in hours. By all rights he ought to have been feeling contented.

As it was, he couldn’t seem to keep still. He kept picking things up and moving them around – a glass paperweight with a dandelion clock trapped inside it, a chipped mug, a watch-case – all the while feeling that there was something very important he ought to have been doing, and that he had forgotten what it was.

Except that was a lie. He knew exactly what it was.

Things had changed. Ever since the Antichrist had appeared on the scene and the monster known as Teamwork had reared its ugly head between them, they had crossed some sort of invisible boundary. A line in the sand. Although neither of them could quite remember where the line was or where it had been drawn or at what point, exactly, they had crossed it, which made the whole thing even more confusing that it needed to be.

_…a spark of good in you…_

It wasn’t about sex. They’d done that before, usually when they were very, very drunk and there had been nobody else around, and it had been… fine. At least, he assumed it had been fine. What memories he had of the whole thing were scattered and nonspecific: gasping, hot skin, the trembling press of fingers. Teeth. They hadn’t talked about it afterwards, but if there had been anything in their systems to work through, it had already been worked through very thoroughly. And then some.

No, this was different. A new problem.

He had the demon’s address somewhere, on a scrap of paper hastily shoved in a desk drawer. He didn’t need it. They’d stayed over there on Sunday. It was the first time Aziraphale had been there, and it had been exactly what he’d expected. Almost. The plants, admittedly, had been a surprise – a jungle of them, trailing from hanging baskets and turning the light from the windows green. Like Eden. Except he didn’t recall Eden having an advanced hi-fi system. Or an espresso maker. Or underfloor heating.

Crowley had tripped over to the sofa and gone to sleep almost instantly, without even taking off his shoes. Aziraphale had briefly thought about commandeering Crowley’s bed and following suit, but decided against it. Sleep didn’t come naturally to him. On the rare occasions when he tried it, it had been unpleasant. Like lying in a shallow ditch, flickering between awake and not, the rest of the world too bright and near to the surface. Crowley seemed to have the ability to dig himself right down into the ditch and stay there. Years of practise, probably.

He’d wandered around for a bit, speaking sympathetically to the plants (which were traumatised down to the last ficus, poor things; what did Crowley _do_ to them?), checking out the music collection (awful, all of it), and attempting to make himself a sandwich (a failed effort – the fridge was empty of everything except for two unopened bottles of mineral water and half a lemon). Eventually he’d simply sat down on the nearest chair and waited for the sun to come up.

There was something very lonely about that flat, with all its sharp edges and spotless surfaces. Even the greenery was too perfect. Nothing personal, nothing homely. It was like a museum, except smaller and much less likely to contain a small café with a selection of themed cakes.

Aziraphale picked up a daguerreotype on his desk for the sixth time, turned it over, looked at it without seeing it.

They’d been scheduled to meet yesterday, but Crowley hadn’t shown. He’d left a message, short and to the point, explaining that he’d had some things to do, and at any other time Aziraphale might have been offended at being stood up. But he wasn’t. Something was up. He couldn’t name it, but things – in a general sense – weren’t as they should be. It was like looking at a design with the wrong dimensions, or an equation missing a crucial integer.

Something about the way he'd looked...

“Oh, _honestly,”_ Aziraphale said to the empty room, and he reached up for his coat.

 

* * *

 

The phone rang again.

The noise was so sudden in the silent flat that Crowley flinched, knocking his elbow against the wall. Aziraphale. Had to be. Who else had his number? But that raised the question of whether or not he should answer. His brain offered up a helpful list of pros and cons, with the “pros” column being noticeably longer, but he still found himself unable to move. The ringing went on, unbothered.

What was it this time? He’d left a message; wasn’t that enough?

No. Probably not.

He’d _meant_ to go. Truly. But then Tuesday morning had rolled around, and it had been raining, and the world outside had been so endless – the horizon barely visible beneath the sheets of rain, the sky grey, offering no way in and no way out. Somewhere in amongst all that grey was Aziraphale. But for how much longer? How many more years (or weeks, or days) did they have left before it all came crashing down?

The phone continued to ring.

Sod it. He owed Aziraphale an explanation, at the very least. Standing, and almost falling over again on legs that had turned numb, and picked up the phone.

“Hello,” he started, taking a deep breath in readiness for what was doubtless going to be a very awkward conversation.

HELLO, CROWLEY.

_Shit._

“Hi,” he said, thanking his lucky stars that he hadn’t greeted Aziraphale right off the bat, and also wondering how long it would take him to make a decent noose out of telephone wire. “How’s things?”

OH, YOU KNOW. UPS AND DOWNS.

“Really?”

MM.

The Armageddon-shaped elephant in the room loomed large.

“So,” said Crowley. “Um. Is this a social call, or…?”

NOT EXACTLY. The voice sounded smug, now that it was getting to the point. WE MERELY WANTED TO ENQUIRE WHETHER YOU ARE STILL INTERESTED IN REMAINING ON EARTH AS A FIELD AGENT.

He almost choked. “I – sorry, what?”

THERE HAS BEEN A DISTINCT LACK OF DEMONIC ACTIVITY FROM YOUR END OVER THE PAST FEW DAYS.

“Oh. _That.”_ Was it Dagon? It sounded like Dagon. Not that it really mattered who it was, they were all the same at that level, the bastards, taking out their boredom on the lower-downs… “Yeah, I’ve just… had some things to do. I’ll be back on top form soon, don’t you worry.”

WE DO HOPE SO. OTHERWISE, CERTAIN PARTIES MAY FEEL THAT YOU ARE NOT PERFORMING TO OPTIMUM CAPACITY. CERTAIN PARTIES MAY ALSO DECIDE THAT YOU ARE BETTER SUITED TO A DESK JOB. SOMETHING WITH FORMS.

It wasn’t Dagon, it was the other one, with the face like something that shouldn’t have gone in the microwave but had. Crowley winced. No one really wanted to spend the rest of eternity in an office surrounded by nothing but work colleagues, but when your office was literally Hell and your colleagues’ idea of team bonding was sticking pokers into various sensitive orifices, eternity started to seem like – well. Like a really, really, unbelievably long time.

“No, no,” he said. “I’m fine here. Just, you know, getting back into the swing of things.”

WE ANTICIPATE THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE BACK TO NORMAL SOON.

“Absolutely.”

IF IT IS NOT… WELL. WE HAVE WAYS OF ENSURING YOUR EFFICIENCY. YOU CAN FILL IN THE BLANKS, CAN’T YOU? CHEERIO.

An impressively nasty chuckle came out of the speakers. It sounded like a kettle boiling over, and it went on for several minutes, or at least Crowley thought it did, up until he realised that the line was dead and the laugh had changed into the dead static of the dialling tone.

Everything back to normal. Well, wasn’t that great? And Adam had even been thoughtful enough to restore the ruined flooring in his office. Presumably he had restored Ligur, too. If he hadn’t, the denizens of Hell would have got in touch with him quite a while ago to remind him of why, exactly, it was not the done thing to reduce one’s superior to an ugly brown stain on the carpet. He tossed the phone from hand to hand and contemplated throwing it across the room.

It rang again just as he was about to do so. He slapped it to his ear and snarled, too keyed-up to pretend politeness, “What is it now?”

A familiar voice said, sounding chagrined, “Oh dear. Is this a bad time?”

Typical. Absolutely bloody typical. Crowley screwed his face up and shook a fist at the ceiling. Aziraphale was still talking. “I’d have called sooner, except I already left a message, and I didn’t want to be a nuisance, so – ”

“No!” Crowley said. “No, you’re fine. I, er, thought you were someone else.”

“Who?”

“Head office. You know. Downstairs.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “You too?”

“Yeah, they wanted to know why I – wait, what do you mean _you too?”_

“They got hold of me yesterday,” Aziraphale said. “Someone seems to think I’m not doing my job properly. Ridiculous, of course, and I told them so – though not in quite so many words. I imagine yours was the along the same lines.”

Crowley took this in. He wasn’t quite sure if this new information made him feel better or worse. On the one hand, it meant they were both in the same boat. On the other, it seemed to be a boat that was rapidly taking on water, and might at any moment capsize and sink to the bottom of an unforgiving ocean. “Why’re you phoning?” he said, finally.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, “I’m outside your block, and I can’t quite figure out how this keypad system is meant to work, so if you wouldn’t mind unlocking the door…”

“You’re _what?”_

“Really, do I have to keep repeating everything I say? I’m outside _._ Can you let me in, please?”

Crowley went over to the buzzer, feeling slightly as if he was levitating, and pressed it. He was still looking dazedly at his own feet when there was a knock: three sharp little taps. Opening the door, he said to a slightly bedraggled-looking Aziraphale, “How did you even get here? Don’t tell me you drove. I’ve had enough heart attacks for one day without knowing that.”

“I took the tube,” said Aziraphale, “and might I just say that I resent your tone? I could have driven, if I wanted. I just didn’t want.” His hair was sticking up in stupid little tufts. Crowley resisted the urge to reach out and flatten them down.

“Do you even know how to drive?” he asked instead, opening the door further.

“I’ve seen it done.”

“I’ve seen open heart surgery done on the telly,” said Crowley. “That doesn’t mean I’d feel confident rolling up my sleeves and diving into some poor sod’s chest cavity.”

“Don’t be disgusting, please,” said Aziraphale. He pushed past him and went into the kitchen, wincing at the sudden brightness. Crowley watched him go and thought how out of place he looked, in the middle of all that sterile marble. How out of place, and yet how _right._

As if overhearing his thoughts, Aziraphale turned to him and said: “Is there any tea?”

 

* * *

 

There was tea. It was Earl Grey. Crowley made two cups of it, in mugs that Aziraphale suspected had been hastily conjured up from the ether, and set them steaming on the counter. “That’s your one,” he said, “there, on the left. Don’t go anywhere.” And he went out of a door so smoothly integrated into the wall that Aziraphale hadn’t even noticed it until now.

Unsure whether or not he was meant to follow, Aziraphale stayed where he was. The flat was silent. Totally. There weren’t any of the usual sounds that houses made, like refrigerators humming or taps dripping. He might just as well have been standing in a morgue.

Crowley came back in, sunglasses on. They were new ones: big and round, like fly’s eyes. They covered up quite a lot of his face. Aziraphale resisted the urge to sigh, and went over to the window – which was really more of a wall, a slanted pane of glass that faced the city skyline – to look out.

Whatever else he might have thought of the flat, he could appreciate this. They were at least twenty storeys up, and if he really focused he could see the narrow grey ribbon of the Thames threading its way eastward. The sun reflected off the windows of the buildings opposite and turned them white and opaque. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass, knocking his own spectacles a little askew.

He heard footsteps, and turned. Crowley was next to him. He stared out of the window, arms folded across his chest and face expressionless.

“The view is very nice,” said Aziraphale lamely, because _somebody_ needed to say something, and it seemed to be up to him to take one for the team.

“It’s all right, isn’t it? You can see the London Eye on a good day.”

“Really? How marvellous.”

They both stood there, watching a hunchbacked pigeon shuffle across the window ledge like a little old woman going out to collect her pension.

“Not to be rude, angel, but why exactly are you here?” said Crowley.

Ah. Now they came to the crux of it.

“I’m not completely sure myself,” Aziraphale said, “but let me try to explain. For the past few days I’ve getting this feeling of, of – well, like I’d forgotten something, only I couldn’t remember what it was I’d forgotten. You see?”

“No,” said Crowley, with commendable honesty.

“Oh, dear. This is coming out all wrong.” Aziraphale tapped his fingers against his thighs in an attempt to quell the agitation. He continued: “I suppose… I thought about how you left on Sunday, and how you didn’t call me back, and then after you cancelled our plans this week; no,” he said as Crowley opened his mouth, holding up a hand to forestall him, “no, that’s not what this is about. Would you believe me if I said that something just felt off?”

“Spooky,” Crowley murmured.

“Not quite.” Aziraphale hesitated. “I know it’s not that unusual to go for a while without seeing each other. But it felt like something was wrong, and… well, to be perfectly candid, my dear, I wanted to check you were all right.”

“And here I am,” Crowley said. “Patently all right.” He turned on the spot, arms out. “Happy?”

There was something about his voice, a kind of tautness, that spoke of discomfort. Aziraphale said, “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

Crowley didn’t say anything for a moment. Not for the first time, Aziraphale wished he was better at reading his expression. It was so much easier when the glasses weren’t on, but with them he was forced to divine everything from the smallest movements of his jaw, or the twitch of a facial muscle.

“No,” he said, after a pause that seemed to go on forever. “Not really.”

“Well, that’s good,” Aziraphale said, “as I don’t plan on going.” Even beneath the jacket it was clear that Crowley was holding himself stiffly, like someone nursing broken ribs. “Now, do you want to tell me what all this is about?”

Crowley shook his head.

“Why not?” said Aziraphale.

“If I start talking,” Crowley said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.” The words were inflectionless. “And I might be able to walk out of your bookshop, but walking out of my own flat doesn’t have quite the same effect, does it?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “We don’t _have_ to talk, necessarily. Not if you don’t want to. But I’m here now, so I may as well stay for a while, don’t you think?”

He laid a hand on Crowley’s upper arm. Crowley went still – so still that parts of his body seemed to twitch and quiver, like a rubber band stretched to breaking point – and said nothing. Aziraphale waited. Seconds trudged past.

All at once the tension fled, and Crowley’s shoulders slumped as if in defeat. “All right,” he said. There was something desperate in the hard lines of his face, the set of his mouth. “All right. You can stay.”

 

* * *

 

They sat down together, keeping a respectable six inches between them. The remote had been stuffed down the side of the sofa. Crowley located it and turned on the television, which was approximately the width of an After-Eight mint and so modern that you could trigger a fatal malfunction just by breathing too loudly at it, and flicked randomly through the channels. Nothing particularly good was showing. It seemed to be all reality TV and sports programmes.

“Go back to the last one,” Aziraphale requested.

Crowley did. “ _Springwatch?_ Really?”

“If you’ve got any better suggestions, I’d like to hear them.”

On the screen, Chris Packham was waxing lyrical about the mating habits of the great tit. “That’s you,” Crowley explained to Aziraphale, who rolled his eyes. They watched as the mother tit returned to her nest, pushing food into the gaping mouths of her hungry offspring. The insides of their beaks looked red and raw.

“So,” Aziraphale said presently. “This call. What exactly did it consist of?”

“The usual,” Crowley answered, cupping both hands around his mug. “Threats of bodily harm, threats of psychological torment, threats masquerading as friendly concern, more threats of bodily harm. Then some minor threats at the end, just to keep things interesting. You?”

“Much the same.” Aziraphale fidgeted, chewing the inside of his mouth, then blurted out, “Look, not to get off the subject, but would you _please_ take those things off while we’re talking? I don’t like not being able to see your face properly. It feels strange.”

“I’ll tell you what makes me feel strange,” Crowley said. “Your glasses. They’re all wonky. One lens higher than the other. Here, let me – ”

“Only if you take yours off,” Aziraphale said, evading his hand.

He sighed. “You drive a hard bargain. Fine.”

Reaching out, he adjusted Aziraphale’s glasses so that they were even once again, then snapped his own off and shoved them into his jacket pocket. They faced each other. Crowley tried very hard to keep the eye contact going, aware of the dark circles that he knew were present under his eyes, knowing it would be more obvious to banish them than to leave them. He might not technically need sleep, but a body got accustomed to it after a century or two.

Aziraphale launched back into the conversation with redoubled vigour. “As I was saying, would you believe they threatened me with a _desk job?_ Me! Not, of course, that I’d object to the Will of – so to speak – but you can imagine what that would have been like, can’t you?”

“Quite easily,” said Crowley, in the tones of a man who has gazed into the grim darkness of the far future, and seen nothing in it except stock reports and terrible office break room food.

“At any rate, I doubt they’ll act on it. Likely they’re just trying to make sure we stay in line.”

Crowley glanced at him. “Really?” he said, trying not to sound too hopeful. “What makes you say that, then?”

“Think about it,” Aziraphale said. “If they really intended to recall us, do you think they’d ring us up and warn us about it beforehand?”

Crowley made a face. “Dunno about that. My superiors might, just to instil a bit of extra dread. One of their favourite pastimes, instilling dread in people. Goes with the job.” He knocked back the last of his tea. It had gone cold. “But you’ve got a point, I suppose.”

“Just try not to worry about it too much,” Aziraphale said. He put a hand on Crowley’s arm. The warmth of it seemed to seep right through his shirt and into his skin. “We can’t change what will happen. But I really do think it will be fine.”

“You can’t know that.”

“No, I can’t,” said Aziraphale. “But I do have faith.”

“In who?” Crowley said, more bitterly than he’d intended.

Aziraphale smiled. It was an expression that shouldn’t have been comforting, but somehow was. The silence – interspersed only by the sounds of a heron trying and failing to swallow a thrashing stickleback – stretched. Crowley found himself wishing, much against his better judgement, that Aziraphale would move closer. “I can’t help it,” he said finally, and coughed slightly to clear the tightness in his throat. “Worrying, I mean.”

Aziraphale’s fingers curled more tightly around his arm. The pressure was fleeting, but it sent a pulse through him that felt like electricity. “I know you can’t.”

“I keep thinking… What if it’s all just a reprieve? It feels too easy. What if they had a chat, right, and went Hmm, that was all a bit embarrassing, best not let it happen again, eh? and dragged you back Up There, and – ” _And I didn’t get to see you again._ “ – and made you do the accounts instead of working on Earth? They could do the same to me. If they wanted. Or they could decide to try it all again and make it work this time, you know, fix all the bits that went wrong. It just…” He dropped his head forward, scrubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes. “It just keeps going around in my head. All the what ifs.”

Aziraphale’s voice, in comparison to his own, sounded mild. “Weren’t you the one who said that Armageddon was a one-time thing? That they didn’t let you keep trying until you got it right?”

“Yeah. Well. I thought so at the time. Not so sure, now.”

He felt Aziraphale lean his head against his shoulder and reach out, twining their fingers together. “I know,” he said. “I’m – ” He swallowed. “I’m feeling rather ill-at-ease about it, myself. But if you really think about it, we’ve been quite lucky.”

“Lucky?” Crowley moved his thumb over Aziraphale’s hand, tracing circles over his knuckles. He was dizzy, breathless, as if his blood had grown too thin. “Yeah. I suppose.”

“We’re still here, after all,” Aziraphale said into his neck. “Against all the odds.”

Feeling daring, Crowley reached up a hand and tentatively ran it through Aziraphale’s hair, probably making the tufts stick up even worse than they had before. “Suppose you think I’m being stupid,” he said. “Getting worked up now, after it’s all over and done with.”

Aziraphale shook his head, but Crowley was still talking.

“Was the candles that set it off. Got me thinking about it all over again.” His voice sounded rough and unfamiliar. “You should get rid of them. That’s how that fire got started in the first place, did I tell you? It was quite the sight.”

He felt, rather than saw, Aziraphale go rigid. “You… you were there for that?”

Wait. Had he mentioned the fire before? He couldn’t remember. It was too late to backtrack, though. “Yeah. Saw the whole thing. Even went in there to try and find you, but…” He lifted one shoulder, lowered it again. “No dice. Obviously. Think I gave the firefighters a pretty good scare, though – they’ll be telling their grandchildren about that one for years.” He huffed out a laugh.

Aziraphale didn’t say anything, but his breathing quickened. Then he sat up sharply, the pressure of his head gone from Crowley’s shoulder. “Crowley,” he said, voice sharp and tight.

Crowley didn’t move.

“Will you look at me, please?”

Reluctantly, Crowley turned his head. Their faces were only centimetres apart. “Hello,” he said, because it had been a difficult day and his bank of snappy conversation starters was running low. Then he didn’t say anything else, because there was something warm and wet on his mouth. He opened it to say _What’s all this about, then?_ but in doing so only managed to deepen the – oh, fuck, it was a kiss, wasn’t it? The feeling was Aziraphale’s mouth. Aziraphale was kissing him.

Briefly, he had the idea that this should have been more startling than it was; but that idea quickly went away and was replaced by a pleasant warm fuzz, like radio static. Crowley kissed back, twisting slightly so that their bodies were flush. The kiss tasted like tea. He wasn’t sure which of them it came from. Probably it was both of them. He worked his hands up under Aziraphale’s jumper, rucking it up, and pressed both palms flat against the angel’s ribs, feeling them expanding in the cool air. In response Aziraphale’s own hands crept up to rest on the small of his back, light as butterflies.

He pulled back a little, breathing in the familiar blend of old paper and detergent and cocoa.

“Good?” Aziraphale said. They were near enough to share breath.

Crowley nodded.

It wasn’t the first time. It was the first time in quite a while, though, and he’d never been this sober before. Perhaps that was why it felt different. The physical stuff was the same: the slick slide of tongues, the hard shapes of ribs and spine under yielding flesh. But there was something else too, a kind of swooping sensation in his stomach, as if he’d fallen from a great height. And a warmth in his chest. Like heartburn. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with anything.

Presently Aziraphale broke away and leaned back, wearing the puzzled expression of someone who has just entered a room and is trying to remember what he came in for. “Was that all right?” he said, sounding genuinely inquisitive.

Crowley blinked at him. His head was spinning. “Is this something we’re doing now?” he said. “On a regular basis, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” said Aziraphale, and his mouth looked damp and a bit swollen, which should really not have been as distracting as it was. “Would you like it to be?”

“Would _you?”_

“Now you’re just taking us around in circles,” Aziraphale said. “Could you please try and give a straight answer for once?”

Crowley bit back the instinctive quip which bubbled up, and answered instead, “Yes, it’s all right with me. If it wasn’t I’d have said something, wouldn’t I?” He tipped his head. “Might want to fix your hair, though. It’s gone weird at the back.”

“It can wait,” said Aziraphale, curling closer.

 

* * *

 

At some point during the afternoon they stopped drinking tea and switched to a bottle of wine, which then became two and moved swiftly on to three. _Springwatch_ finished and was replaced by an old black-and-white film that Crowley was sure he’d seen before, but couldn’t remember the name of. “Is there any left?” he asked Aziraphale, holding out his empty glass. He was feeling a little more like himself now, although the jury was out on whether this was cause for celebration.

“I think that’s the last of it,” Aziraphale said. He shook the last drops from the neck of the bottle. “It’s very good. Where did you get it from?”

He shrugged. “Pinched it from the Chelsea Arts Ball. 1958, I think. Why? You want another?”

Aziraphale looked torn.

“Oh, fine,” he said eventually, “since you’re offering. Just one more. And after that I should probably leave you in peace. I’m afraid I’ve intruded on you for long enough.” He gave Crowley a faint smile that was probably meant to be reassuring, and got up, wandering over to the kitchen.

Crowley heard the tap start running. He sat very still on the sofa, feeling the panic flap around inside him like a trapped moth. The world seemed to have fallen sideways, as if someone had picked it up like a flowerpot and shown him that there was nothing underneath except dirt and worms. This, he thought dizzily as the couple onscreen waltzed in each other’s arms, was what had been waiting for him the whole time. This was the real McCoy. It was real because it was bad, and the bad stuff was what stayed – what lasted – when everything else was gone. “Don’t go,” he blurted out.

Aziraphale came back over with the new bottle. “Hm?”

“Nothing,” said Crowley.

 _“Not_ nothing. What did you say?”

His fingernails were digging into his palms. There would be marks there later, little red crescent moons. “’S nothing. I said, you could stay. If you wanted. I mean, you don’t have to. You’ve probably got lots to do, what with the bookshop and – ”

“All right.”

“ – and categorising all those new books that Adam gave you after the fire and the hang on what did you just say?”

“I said, ‘all right’. I’m happy to stay for a while. If that’s what you need.”

He swallowed. “Well. I mean, I won’t make you…”

“As if you could,” Aziraphale said scornfully. “Move over.”

Obligingly, he shifted. Aziraphale sat down next to him, rather closer than usual, so that Crowley could feel the warmth coming off him.

They watched as a sepia-toned Virginia Mayo complained about the trials of being married to a no-good drugstore cowboy, and bit by bit the world began to realign itself, sliding seamlessly over the yawning black gap underneath. Hiding it, covering it up. As if it had never been there at all. It was like – Crowley groped for a metaphor – it was like how dreams never actually _felt_ like dreams, and it wasn’t until you woke up that you started to wonder how you’d ever mistaken them for something true. “Do your dreams feel real, when you’re having them?” he said abruptly.

Aziraphale, who seemed to be far more invested in the film than Crowley was, started. “My – ? Oh, I don’t have them.”

“What, not ever?”

“Well, I don’t really sleep, you know. Always seemed like a bit of a waste of time.”

“Sleeping? Nah, it’s brilliant. You should give it a try one of these days. I expect you’d like it if you learned how to do it properly.” He paused for a moment, weighing up the pros and cons again. What the hell. They’d already crossed nine out of ten lines; what was one more? “Could try it now, if you like,” he said, fighting to sound casual about it.

Aziraphale hummed. He seemed to be considering it, for a wonder. “I suppose it’s worth a try,” he said after a minute. “Although I don’t think I’m quite in the mood for the other thing.”

“And by the other thing you mean sex.”

“Yes, _thank you_ , I’d rather hoped that that was clear. Right now I’d just prefer not to. It feels a bit… Oh, I don’t know. A bit soon.”

“It’s not like we haven’t done it before,” Crowley pointed out, but he knew what Aziraphale meant. It wouldn’t be the same. Not this time. “Just sleep is fine. That’s all I was thinking of, anyway. Come on.”

“Now? But I’m not tired.”

“Yeah, you won’t be at first. You sort of need to train your body into it.”

“Is that what you’ve done?” Aziraphale sounded curious.

Crowley, who had briefly forgotten about his own haggard appearance, winced. “Yes. Unfortunately. It started off as a hobby, but now I seem to need it. Bit like withdrawal, I s’pose.” Holding out a hand, he pulled Aziraphale to his feet.

The bedroom was the last doorway on the right. Crowley navigated them both towards it. “You can stay dressed if you want,” he said, kicking the door open, “but the shoes have to come off. This is Egyptian cotton.” There were no blinds or curtains, but that didn’t matter; it was getting dark anyway. Down below the city was lit up like a circuit board.

Aziraphale toed off his loafers and stood there uncertainly in his socks.

“Most people start by lying down,” Crowley advised him.

“Oh, shut up. I know _how_ to do it. In theory.” Going around to the side of the bed, Aziraphale settled himself so that he was flat with both hands folded stiffly across his chest, like a parody of a corpse. Crowley flopped down next to him with considerably less grace.

“Weird things, ants,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Something wailed outside: a stray cat, an ambulance, something like that. Crowley silenced it with a thought. Pressed on, determinedly: “I was thinking about it earlier. They’re clever, you know? Like, _really_ clever. And they can carry stuff that weighs about a hundred times more than them. All that strength, packed into something so tiny. You’ve got to wonder, haven’t you?”

Aziraphale snorted. “Don’t tell me. You think they’re going to rise up and stage a coup against the human race. I’ve heard that one before; it’s hardly original material, my dear.”

“Nah,” Crowley said, stretching so that his spine cracked. “I’ve always had a suspicion that cockroaches are gonna become the next overlords. Very tough, cockroaches. You can microwave ‘em.”

“Perhaps that will be the new revolution. Cockroaches against humanity.” He heard Aziraphale shift, trying to find a more comfortable position. “Although I suppose Agnes would have foreseen something like that, wouldn’t she?”

“Mm. Or Socrates. Foresaw everything, that bloke.”

“Often in absurdly vague detail.”

Crowley laughed. He rolled over on to his back and stared up at the ceiling. Like most ceilings it lacked compelling landmarks, but its whiteness pleased him in a way it hadn’t before. There was a feeling of immense light and space, as if someone had taken the lid off a box. “Vague’s the right word for it,” he said. “He’d say something like ‘I see change on the horizon!’, and everyone’d get all excited until it turned out to be a prediction of the sunrise. Maybe I should start predicting things, see how much of it actually comes true. Might be fun, don’t you think?”

Aziraphale’s hand was tracing shapes on his arm. It was a casual, unconsidered touch, the way you might reach out and stroke a cat. “You’re a philosopher, now?”

“Mm. Socrates II, they call me.”

He turned his head and saw that Aziraphale’s eyes were already closed. He was fidgeting, though, eyebrows furrowed and mouth twitching as if he was already in the middle of a dream. “Don’t try so hard,” Crowley told him. “Just relax.”

Aziraphale looked like he was trying very hard to relax, and failing.

“Stop _thinking_ so much,” Crowley said, exasperated.

“You can talk,” Aziraphale muttered, but little by little the crease between his brows smoothed out. His mouth slackened, breathing easing out until it was so slow as to be imperceptible, and the movement of his hand slowed until his fingers were just resting there peacefully on Crowley’s wrist, slightly curled.

Crowley propped himself up on his elbows and watched him. He looked quite happy, like that. Very still. In fact, he looked dead.

That was stupid. He wasn’t dead. He was asleep. It was fine.

 _Enough’s enough,_ he told himself, but it was useless; that inexplicable panic was rising up again, unstoppable as flood waters.

He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Then, giving up, he shifted sideways and laid his head on Aziraphale’s chest, listening. There it was: _da-dum, da-dum._ A heartbeat. He went limp with a combination of relief and vexation: was it going to be like this all the time, now?

“Hello,” Aziraphale said from underneath him, voice blurry. “Everything all right?”

Crowley didn’t answer. He shut his eyes, listening to that steady reassuring beat, feeling the rise and fall of Aziraphale’s chest. The panic receded, leaving only bits and pieces of itself behind, like shells stranded on the beach after the tide had gone out.

He took a deep breath and let it out again. The exhale came out shuddery. Maybe, he thought, this was the real world after all. Maybe warmth and light and other people were real, whether you could keep hold of them or not. It was a faint hope, but it was there all the same.

Aziraphale shifted. “Crowley? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just wanted to check you were… You know. Just checking.”

“No need,” Aziraphale said around a yawn, and he rubbed a drowsy hand up and down Crowley’s back. Crowley shivered, melting into it. “We’re going to be fine.”


End file.
